The environmentalists may have been the last to know, but not by much; an administration official told POLITICO that the White House didn’t notify the EPA of the decision until Thursday — and that EPA officials were not involved in the decision-making process.

The EPA was “completely blindsided by this,” said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

As recently as last month, EPA lawyers were asking a federal appellate court in Washington to delay litigation over the Bush-era ozone standard because a new Obama ozone rule was just around the corner.

But on Friday, Obama announced that he was asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to put the new rule on ice — referring to the decision as part of a larger effort aimed at “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

“Many MoveOn members are wondering today how they can ever work for President Obama's reelection, or make the case for him to their neighbors, when he does something like this, after extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and giving in to tea party demands on the debt deal,” MoveOn’s executive director, Justin Ruben said in a statement. “This is a decision we'd expect from George W. Bush.”

The White House quickly deflected suggestions that the president had caved in to Republican pressure with the 2012 election looming. “This has nothing to do with politics, nothing at all,” one White House official told reporters Friday on a conference call.

But it’s hard to avoid that impression after industry and congressional Republicans launched an aggressive campaign to convince the administration to drop the standards. Major business groups have warned that the ozone rule would be one of the most expensive environmental rules ever imposed on the U.S. economy — with an estimated cost of up to $90 billion annually — and that a new rule would hurt Obama’s reelection bid.

In 2008, the Bush administration tightened the ozone limits from 84 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion, despite scientific advisers' recommendations to issue a standard that would have taken the limits down to the 60 to 70 parts per billion range.

In January 2010, the Obama EPA proposed moving down to the 60 to 70 parts per billion when averaged over an eight-hour period.

Jackson wrote that she had decided to reconsider the rule based on concerns that the Bush-era standards were “not legally defensible,” given the scientific evidence and the recommendations of the EPA’s independent science advisers.